Saving the Past for the Future;

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Historical Preservation Crusaders:
Saving the Past
for the Future
Avisit to Lake Forest, Illinois is an experience that rivals
Alice's journey through the looking glass. Compared to
the modern skyscrapers and bustling streets of downtown
Chicago, just thirty miles away, the ambience of this little suburb
is almost otherworldly. Marrow, winding lanes, illuminated by
old-fashioned gas street lamps, curve through wooded bluffs and
bridge deep ravines. And along these rustic streets stand scores
of palatial mansions, built mostly in the early 1900s by such
American architects as David Adler, Henry Ives Cobb and Howard
Van Doren Shaw.
These elegant manors, like the many other historic structures of
Lake Forest, are significant vestiges of the city's turn-of-the-century
heyday. Their unique styles and architectural features are
virtually inimitable now. Yet, like Alice's wonderland, the fabulous
buildings of Lake Forest may some day exist only in the pages of
books — and in the memories of those who were fortunate
enough to have seen them for themselves.
Gayle Dompke, wife of Chicago director Richard E. Dompke, and
president of the Lake Forest Foundation for Historic Preservation
which she organized three years ago, believes that much of the
historic architecture of the city is significant enough to warrant
its preservation for the enjoyment of present and future genera­tions.
Gayle is dedicating her time and utmost efforts toward the
achievement of this goal.
Bordered to the north and south by highly developed suburbs of
Chicago's North Shore, Lake Forest is, in fact, an anachronism.
Its atmosphere compels the mind to wander backward into a
bygone era — an era in which the superwealthy of Chicago and
the Midwest created a haven of luxury there by the picturesque
shores of Lake Michigan. During the high-rolling years before the
Great Depression, the whirlwind social schedules and Gatsby-like
parties of Lake Forest's lords and ladies of the manors drew the
attention of all the world. Although such carefree extravagance
has been largely abandoned in modern times, the city remains as
the legacy of a truly golden age — the like of which this country
may never see again.
Though few would deny the cultural value of preserving Lake
Forest's irreplaceable architecture and landscapes, a practical
question arises: who can afford it? For the overwhelming majority
of our society, the cost of buying — and particularly maintaining
— a fifty-room mansion is clearly prohibitive. Thousand-dollar
monthly heating bills and ten-thousand-dollar yearly grounds-maintenance
bills are not unusual among Lake Forest estate
owners, and the amounts paid in property taxes are enough to
boggle the mind. Yet even among those who are fortunate
enough to be able to absorb the financial responsibilities of such
a property, a secondary query arises: who needs it?
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